The advent and explosion of the World Wide Web and the Internet have created a huge demand for data communications bandwidth. Once satisfied with a 56 Kb/s analog modem, many home users are now demanding broadband Internet connections capable of sustaining 1.5 Mb/S, or more. In order to satisfy this ever-increasing demand for bandwidth to the home and office, several competing standards for data communications have emerged. One of these standards is digital subscriber line (“DSL”) technology.
DSL is a high-speed connection that utilizes the same wires as a regular telephone line. DSL offers a number of advantages over other types of high-speed links to the home and office. For instance, because DSL utilizes a higher frequency for data communications than that used for voice communications, the same phone line may be used for both data and voice simultaneously. Moreover, several different types of DSL connections exist that can provide extremely high data rates without requiring new wiring. Therefore, DSL can operate on the existing phone line already present in most homes and businesses. Additionally, other types of broadband connections to the home such as cable modems, utilize a shared network group for a number of subscribers. Adding users to such a shared network means lower performance in many instances. Because DSL provides a dedicated connection from each user back to the nearest central office (“CO”), users typically do not see a performance decrease as new users are added.
A typical DSL installation utilizes several pieces of equipment. A transceiver, or modem, is located at the customer end, and a DSL access multiplexer (“DSLAM”) and a voice switch are located at the CO serving the customer. A DSL transceiver located at the customer location connects to a customer's data processing equipment and to the standard telephone line connection located at the customer premises. The DSLAM, located at the CO serving the customer is also connected to the telephone line that the DSL transceiver is connected to. The voice switch is connected to the telephone line shared by the DSL transceiver and the customer's telephone at the customer premises and provides voice communication between the central office and the customer premises over the public switched telephone network (“PSTN”).
A typical DSL circuit is wired by terminating the telephone line from the customer on one side of a distribution frame located in the CO. The wiring from the DSLAM is terminated on the other side of the distribution frame. A cross connection is typically made between the two terminations to establish the connection between the customer telephone line and the DSLAM. The voice switch is typically wired to the DSLAM. In the wired DSL circuit, the DSLAM receives the voice and data communications from the customer telephone line through the distribution frame. The DSLAM then sends the data communications to a data switch connected to a data communications network and the voice communications to the voice switch connected to the PSTN.
Current schemes for wiring a DSL circuit in a CO suffer from a number of problems. The first problem is that in large central offices, the DSLAM is often located a significant distance (or even on a separate floor) from both the distribution frame and the voice switch, requiring significant lengths of wire to connect to the DSLAM. Such significant wiring lengths results in additional man-hours being used to route the wire between the affected equipment in large central offices in addition to the cost of the wire. Another problem with current wiring schemes is the customer voice communication outage that occurs when a connection to the DSLAM is removed (e.g., when a customer no longer desires DSL service). Because the DSLAM also provides the connection from the customer's telephone line to the voice switch, the customer will no longer receive a dial tone from the voice switch until the circuit is rewired at the distribution frame. Because providing normal telephone service is a highly competitive business, such downtime may result in the unacceptable loss of customers. At a minimum, such downtime can result in unhappy customers and reduced network availability.
Therefore, in light of the above, there is a need for a method and system for wiring a DSL circuit between a DSLAM and a voice switch that can minimize the amount of wire required to establish connections for the circuit. Additionally, there is a need for a method and system that can eliminate the amount of customer downtime experienced when the DSLAM is disconnected from the DSL circuit.